THE DECLASSIFIED
COLLECTION
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The Gateway Process

9 June 1983 · 29 source pages

In 1983 an Army intelligence officer assessed Monroe Institute's Gateway training, judged its essential objectives plausible and proposed steps toward out-of-body information gathering.

Original source record

The Gateway Process — opening source page

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Publisher annotations

Commentary by The Declassified Collection, separate from the original source.

Source PDF page 1 · 4 notes

INSCOM

U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command, the Army intelligence command named in the memorandum's letterhead.

IAGPC-O

An Army office/routing symbol on the memorandum; it is an administrative identifier, not a classification marking.

Itzhak Bentov

Engineer and inventor whose 1977 book Stalking the Wild Pendulum supplies much of the report's biomedical and cosmological model.

Niels Bohr

Danish physicist and Nobel laureate. McDonnell invokes a saying attributed to Bohr to signal that the paper will rely on highly conceptual reasoning.

Source PDF page 2 · 2 notes

LTC, MI

Lieutenant Colonel, Military Intelligence.

Det O

Detachment O, the unit McDonnell identifies himself as commanding.

Source PDF page 3 · 3 notes

Hemi-Sync

Monroe Institute term for audio exercises intended to produce synchronized activity between the brain's hemispheres.

Cortical homunculus

A body map showing how different body regions are represented across the sensory and motor cortex.

Transcendental Meditation

A meditation movement founded by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi; the report treats it as a comparison technique for altered states.

Source PDF page 4 · 2 notes

Third and lateral ventricles

Fluid-filled cavities within the brain. The report uses them in Bentov's proposed vibration model.

Homunculus

Latin for 'little man'; here, the mapped representation of the body on sensory and motor cortex.

Source PDF page 5 · 3 notes

Kundalini

A concept from Indian yogic traditions. The report discusses it through Bentov and Lee Sannella's physiological interpretation.

Hertz (Hz)

Cycles per second, the unit used for frequency.

Biofeedback

Training in which a person uses real-time measurements of bodily activity to learn voluntary control over some physiological responses.

Source PDF page 6 · 3 notes

EEG

Electroencephalogram: a recording of electrical activity measured at the scalp.

Monroe Institute

Virginia organization founded by Robert Monroe that developed the Gateway training program and Hemi-Sync audio exercises.

Coherence

In this report, a condition in which left- and right-hemisphere EEG patterns are described as matching in frequency and amplitude.

Source PDF page 7 · 3 notes

Frequency Following Response (FFR)

A tendency for neural activity to synchronize with rhythmic sensory stimulation; the report uses it as part of its explanation of Hemi-Sync.

Binaural beat

An auditory percept produced when slightly different tones are presented separately to the two ears; the perceived beat corresponds to their frequency difference.

Beta / Theta

Conventional EEG frequency bands. The report associates beta with wakefulness and theta with drowsiness or sleep.

Source PDF page 8 · 3 notes

Resonance

A system's tendency to respond strongly when driven near one of its natural frequencies.

Bifurcation echo

Bentov's pressure-wave reflection at the aorta's branching. In the model, the returning pulse interferes with the next outward pulse; deep relaxation is supposed to weaken that echo and let a regular vibration build through the body. This is the proposed bridge from lowered blood pressure to brain stimulation.

Dura mater

The tough outer membrane surrounding the brain and spinal cord.

Source PDF page 9 · 3 notes

Carrier wave

In communications engineering, a signal used to carry information. The report applies the term analogically to bodily resonance.

Energy grid

Terminology used by Bentov and the report for atomic and biological structure; it is not a standard technical name in modern physics.

Out-of-body state

A reported experience of perceiving oneself or one's awareness as located outside the physical body; the memorandum treats it as a possible operational state.

Source PDF page 10 · 3 notes

Hologram

A recording of an interference pattern that can reconstruct the wavefront of light from an object.

Coherent light

Light whose waves maintain a stable phase relationship; lasers are a standard source.

Dennis Gabor

Physicist who developed the theoretical basis of holography and received the 1971 Nobel Prize in Physics.

Source PDF page 11 · 3 notes

Karl Pribram

Neuroscientist associated with holographic models of brain function.

David Bohm

Physicist whose ideas about an 'implicate order' influenced later holographic interpretations of reality.

Binary 'go/no-go'

The computer comparison does two jobs in McDonnell's model: the right hemisphere receives a whole pattern, and the left reduces it to comparisons with stored information. This division of labour supplies his explanation of why hemispheric synchronization should improve perception.

Source PDF page 12 · 1 notes

'Go/no-go' focus

The report's shorthand for reducing complex input to a binary comparison or decision.

Source PDF page 13 · 3 notes

The Absolute

The report's name for an infinite, motionless field of consciousness or energy. It is a metaphysical construct within the memorandum's model.

Time-space

The memorandum's preferred term for ordinary spacetime.

Self-cognition

Awareness of one's own thought processes - knowing that one knows.

Source PDF page 14 · 3 notes

Planck length

The paragraph shifts units: its first threshold is expressed in centimetres per second, a speed, while Bentov's quotation gives centimetres, a distance. The Planck length is a distance scale. Treating it as a speed at which an oscillation leaves time-space is a step in McDonnell's argument, not a conversion of units.

'Click-out'

Bentov's and the report's term for a claimed instant in which an oscillation reaches rest and exits time-space; it is not standard quantum-mechanics terminology.

Tachyon

A hypothetical faster-than-light particle. Tachyons have not been experimentally observed.

Source PDF page 15 · 1 notes

Planck scale

The figure uses the Planck-scale idea as the boundary in the report's speculative transition between time-space and 'the Absolute'.

Source PDF page 16 · 2 notes

Intervening dimensions

The report's speculative layers between ordinary time-space and the Absolute.

Entrainment

Synchronization of one oscillating system with another; the memorandum extends the concept to consciousness and its proposed energy environment.

Source PDF page 17 · 3 notes

Big Bang

The cosmological model in which the observable universe evolved from an early hot, dense state.

Torus

A doughnut-shaped surface or topology. Bentov uses a toroidal/ovoid form as a model for the universe.

Quasar

An extremely luminous active galactic nucleus powered by matter falling toward a supermassive black hole.

Source PDF page 18 · 2 notes

Cosmic egg

Bentov's ovoid schematic for the universe's proposed flow of matter and time.

White hole

A hypothetical time-reversed analogue of a black hole; unlike black holes, white holes have not been observed.

Source PDF page 19 · 2 notes

Universal hologram

The report's model in which the history and structure of reality are encoded as an interference pattern across the universe.

Quality of consciousness

The next section treats consciousness as an organizing principle distinct from the physical body - a premise of the memorandum's model.

Source PDF page 21 · 3 notes

Energy conversion box

A Gateway visualization exercise used to set aside distracting concerns before training.

Resonant tuning

A preparatory humming exercise intended to produce a felt bodily vibration.

Gateway affirmation

A repeated statement of intention used in the training sequence before Hemi-Sync is introduced.

Source PDF page 22 · 3 notes

Focus 10 / Focus 12

Monroe Institute labels for successive training states. The memorandum describes Focus 12 as 'expanded awareness' beyond the earlier preparatory state.

Problem solving

A named Gateway exercise in which a question is held in expanded awareness and an answer is expected through later intuition or imagery.

Patterning

A visualization exercise intended to project a desired outcome as though it were already achieved.

Source PDF page 23 · 3 notes

Color breathing

A visualization exercise that associates imagined colors with desired bodily effects.

Energy bar tool

An imagined cylinder of light used as a focusing symbol in several Gateway exercises.

Remote viewing

An attempted method of acquiring information about a distant or unseen target without ordinary sensory access.

Source PDF page 24 · 3 notes

Focus 15

A Monroe training state that the memorandum associates with access to the past.

Focus 21

A more advanced state that the memorandum associates with the future and with movement beyond ordinary time-space.

CPS

Cycles per second, an older expression equivalent to hertz (Hz).

Source PDF page 25 · 3 notes

REM sleep

Rapid-eye-movement sleep, a sleep stage associated with vivid dreaming and temporary suppression of most skeletal-muscle movement.

Motor cortex

Brain regions involved in planning and executing voluntary movement.

Information collection potential

The practical test described here is demanding and simple: read ten computer-generated digits at a distant laboratory. McDonnell reports partial readings but no complete ten-digit success. His next recommendations address that information distortion, including the three-viewer comparison at The Gateway Process — source PDF page 28.

Source PDF page 26 · 3 notes

Pseudoscopic

A depth-reversed or inside-out view of a three-dimensional image; the memorandum cites this as one possible source of distorted perception.

Alexandra David-Neel / Lama Yongden

Authors of Secret Oral Teachings in Tibetan Buddhist Sects, quoted here by the memorandum.

Indra's net

A Buddhist and Hindu metaphor of a network of jewels in which each reflects all the others; the report uses it as an analogy for a holographic universe.

Source PDF page 27 · 2 notes

Conclusion

Paragraph 38 is McDonnell's conclusion as author of the memorandum; the file does not contain a separate command approval of that conclusion.

Autohypnotic

Self-induced hypnosis, proposed here as one element of the accelerated training sequence.

Source PDF page 28 · 2 notes

Multi-focus approach

Three observers would examine the same target from the present, immediate past and immediate future, then compare their accounts. McDonnell proposes this as a remedy for the distorted information discussed at The Gateway Process — source PDF page 25; the design makes simultaneous departure and a shared environment part of the test.

Non-corporeal

Without a physical body; the memorandum uses the phrase for possible intelligent 'energy forms'.

Source PDF page 29 · 1 notes

The source mixture

The nine entries combine books, magazine articles and a Monroe Institute monograph. Bentov provides the central physical model; Ferguson introduces the Pribram/Bohm connection; Monroe supplies an account of out-of-body experience. The bibliography makes visible how McDonnell assembled one explanation from several different kinds of writing.